Accessibility in Dote

VoiceOver

Every button, picker and card has a spoken name, and each screen has headings you can jump between with the rotor. During checks Dote speaks instead of relying on what's on screen:

• Camera breathing check: it announces when it has found your pet, when it has found the breathing (with the rate so far), when your pet moves out of view, distance hints such as "Move a little closer", and the result with its verdict. The live breath count on screen is read when you move to it, not spoken on every breath.
• Count by tapping: double-tap once to start, then tap anywhere on the screen once per breath. You don't need to find the circle, and VoiceOver stays quiet while you tap. Dote speaks at the start, when 10 seconds are left, and with the result.
• Vet report in another language: while Apple Translation works, a progress bar reads its percentage to VoiceOver.
• Breathing and weight charts: each has a spoken summary and an Audio Graph, so you can hear whether the trend is rising or falling. Select the chart, then choose Audio Graph in the rotor. The weight chart also lists every weigh-in as text below it.
• Pet ID card: the front reads as one button with your pet's name, species and breed. Double-tap it to turn it over. VoiceOver then reads the back one item at a time: the heading, the instructions, and the QR code with everything it holds (name, species, microchip, vet and phone numbers). "Show the front" below the card turns it back.
• Feel the breathing: on the welcome screen and after your first check, swipe up or down to the "Feel the breathing" action and double-tap. You'll feel four slow breaths as gentle swells (Haptics must be on in Dote's Settings).
• Medicines: each row has its own Given, Edit and Add to Calendar buttons, so nothing needs a swipe.

Larger Text and Bold Text

Text follows the size you set in Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Larger Text, all the way to the largest accessibility sizes. Rows stack instead of cutting text off, and screens that no longer fit scroll. The pet ID card on screen grows with your text size, and the card gets taller instead of shrinking the words. At the largest sizes the card stops growing; your vet, microchip and insurance details are listed below it in text that keeps growing. Shared images and printouts (the ID card image, the lost-pet poster and the memory book) keep a fixed design so they print and share the same way. With Bold Text on, Dote's serif headlines switch to a bold face too.

Dark Mode and the night palette

Dote follows your iPhone's Light or Dark appearance. If you check on your pet at night, Settings in Dote → Display → Night palette after 8 pm switches to the warm dark look every evening, even in Light mode. The camera screens (breathing, walk, body size, breed and 3D) are always fully dark, including their buttons, panels and messages, so they don't glare in a dark room and the text stays readable over the live picture. The pet ID card on screen follows Dark Mode; the lost-pet poster and the shared and printed card images stay paper-coloured, like the printed versions.

Increase Contrast

With Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Increase Contrast on, Dote uses darker secondary text and deeper result colours (each at least 7:1 against Dote's backgrounds) and stronger dividers. The Apple Watch app and its complications follow Increase Contrast too.

Results never rely on colour

Every result is written out (Typical, Recheck later, Talk to your vet) with its own symbol, so you never need to tell colours apart. On charts, your pet's limit is a dashed line, not only a coloured one.

Smart Invert

With Smart Invert on, your pet's photos, stickers, the camera and cards keep their real colours while the rest of Dote inverts.

Reduce Motion

With Settings → Accessibility → Motion → Reduce Motion on, Dote's living scenes (rain, fireflies, the breathing bloom, the welcome sunrise and celebration effects) hold still or fade gently instead of moving, and the pet ID card crossfades between its sides instead of spinning. Breathing results still show the number and verdict; only the animation is removed.

Reduce Transparency

Dote uses the system's own glass and materials, so Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Reduce Transparency makes them solid.

Voice Control and Switch Control

Every button has a name you can say, matching what it shows (for example "Tap Close", "Tap Given" or "Tap Edit"); say "Show names" to see them. Gestures have alternatives: the pet ID card is itself a button, so say its name to flip it, and the then-and-now photo slider can be adjusted step by step. In Count by tapping, say "Breath" or "Count" to count a breath.

Large touch targets

Buttons are at least 44 by 44 points, Apple's recommended size, including small ones like Given, Edit and Add to Calendar on medicines, call your vet on the pet ID card, and Skip and Not now in setup, and the button that lets you skip the first check. In Count by tapping, the whole screen counts as the tap area, with or without VoiceOver.

Haptics

Dote can let you feel your pet's breathing rhythm: on the welcome screen touch and hold your sleeping pet, and after your first breathing check touch and hold their flower, to feel each breath as a slow swell. With VoiceOver, use the "Feel the breathing" action instead. If you'd rather not have vibrations, turn them off in Dote → Settings → Haptics. Dote never vibrates while the camera is measuring, so your hand stays steady. In Count by tapping, a soft pulse confirms each tap, and the last three seconds tick.

Sound

Sounds in Dote are optional ambience. Nothing important is sound-only: every alert and result is shown on screen as well.

The app, the Apple Watch app, results and safety advice are available in 21 languages: English, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese. Two kinds of U.S. data are shown as the FDA publishes them, in English: reported side effects (openFDA) and pet food recall notices. VoiceOver reads Dote in the language your iPhone uses.

Some checks rely on pointing the camera at your pet. Dote guides you, but these are harder without sight:

• Camera breathing check: VoiceOver tells you when your pet is found or out of view, but framing them can still take some trial. Count by tapping is a fully accessible alternative: rest a hand gently on your pet's chest and tap once per breath. It's always free and uses the same verdict rules.
• Walk check: you film your pet walking from the side, which needs you to keep them in frame.
• Body size and Keep them in 3D (on iPhone models with LiDAR) use augmented reality and are mainly visual.
• Camera mode labels: the small labels under the camera (Breathing, Walk and so on) don't grow with Larger Text. The screen titles, guidance and the species badge on the camera do.
• Sticker touch-ups: fixing the edge of your pet's cut-out by hand is visual. The automatic sticker works without it.

If one of these gets in your way, please tell us. Accessibility fixes come first.

Before each release, Apple's automated accessibility audit runs on 34 of Dote's screens: 11 of the 12 first-time setup steps, Today, Checks, Count by tapping, Records, Medicines and the medicine editor, both sides of the pet ID card, the paywall, Settings and more. Eleven of them (including Today, Checks, Records, Settings, Count by tapping, Medicines, the medicine editor, the pet ID card, the paywall and the welcome screen) are audited again at the largest accessibility text size. A new finding fails the test, whether it's a missing label, a small touch target, cut-off text, Dynamic Type or contrast. When the audit flags contrast on a visible element, the test measures that text against its background on the screenshot, and it has to reach 4.5:1. Findings we have checked by hand on the screenshot are kept in a reviewed list with the reason: contrast the audit reports without any element (the animated night sky, text under the tab bar, decorative coloured icons), Dynamic Type on text that does scale but that the audit can't follow (the ID card, Apple's own form controls, share cards drawn as images), a few clipping false alarms, and Dynamic Type results that don't repeat when the audit runs twice. A separate test checks that each of Dote's palette text colours reaches 4.5:1 against the backgrounds it's used on, in Light, Dark and Increase Contrast. We also go through the app by hand with VoiceOver, Voice Control, Larger Text, Increase Contrast and Reduce Motion.